


that which we break

by historymiss



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1413862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Piece by piece, his life is flayed away until the soldier remains, bare white bone exposed among the rotting meat of a man who died, silver metal sliding out of skin. It is not so hard, in the end. (he’s used to being who he needs to be to survive)</p>
            </blockquote>





	that which we break

The subject does not come to you raw. The fragments of his old life cling to him: they must be cut away with the tattered blue scraps of his uniform (disappointingly dark, this is not the soldier you'd hoped for). You seal the gaping wounds shut as you carve and stitch and lay new scars over the old, a bright red star on gleaming metal.

(When Zola sees that, he clucks his tongue: disappointed, that he should be branded with a star and not a skull. He's overruled. HYDRA is bigger than it's ever been, but it's also thinner, and the Winter Soldier is a Russian creation, the fist of HYDRA made of good Soviet steel).

The man is rebuilt stronger, silent, scarred. He scares you, perhaps, in a way you can't define. He's pathetic, and powerful, and strange. A new man for a new time. 

And after you have rebuilt him, you break him again. 

 _Who are you_ , a demand, not a question. He watches you, you watch the memory slide under his eyes, hidden in the blue. He thinks he's being cunning, when he replies with a dead man's name: you hit him, again, and worse, until a day comes when he responds to the question with nothing but silence- waiting, an empty space to be filled.

Piece by piece, his life is flayed away until the soldier remains, bare white bone exposed among the rotting meat of a man who died, silver metal sliding out of skin. It is not so hard, in the end. (he's used to being who he needs to be to survive)

You train him to it, and he learns well. Takes to the weapons with a focus and intensity that he seems to bring to everything, once he's shed the pieces of who he used to be. He fights like an animal, except he is silent, and this pleases you. Tongues belong to men, not assassins. You muzzle him anyway, for the look of the thing.

He changes hands. Who _you_ are changes. He does not. He takes the orders, and others train to keep him functioning. He trusts them, in his way- turns his head to their careful ministrations, lifts his arm to allow them to work. Opens his mouth willingly for the block, when it is needed. Submits humbly to correction, when it is given. _Whatever_ form it is given.

(in time, he comes to welcome the pain of being wiped. It is terrible, but it is clean, and it burns away the buzzing of his brain)

He is broken so thoroughly. It is perfect. Nothing moves behind his eyes any more, and when he speaks, he is a ghost, with his precise, robotic Russian and his hesitant, infrequent English.

You check him like a horse, maintain him like a tool, forget there was ever a man inside that pile of meat and metal that moves at your command. After all, he's forgotten too.

His resurrection, it is fair to say, surprises you both.


End file.
